I did not learn the pricing model nor much about bridge construction by playing with it-just tried things randomly and scaled up beams that failed and scaled down beams that didn’t. In my playing around today I came up with a slightly different design from last year, probably because the width or depth is slightly different in this year’s problem:Ī bridge that costs under $166,000 in West Point Bridge Designer 2012.Īlthough the bridge design program is fun to play with (as addicting as many other computer games), it doesn’t really teach much engineering. Their site prep costs look like they are just pushing around dirt, not blasting out rocky cliffs and building piers and abutments-and even then they are way low. Perhaps they need to scale their costs by 100. I think that they left out the cost of installing the bridge, and may be using prices from the 1960s for materials, as I doubt that a bridge can be built in California for under $2million, and big bridges cost in the billions. I don’t believe their cost functions, though, as no one around here is able to make a 2-lane bridge capable of carrying trucks for only $166k, which is about what the cheapest design I came up with costs. They’d have to change the cost functions a lot to make a different design be much better, but they are trying to stick fairly close to standard engineering practices. Although the contest has changed the design parameters and cost functions somewhat this year, a good solution to last year’s design is also similar to a pretty good solution for this year’s. I think that kids who have been assigned to do the contest are looking for ways to cheat by copying someone else’s design. Then it occurred to me that the 2012 contest must have been released at West Point Bridge Design Contest. I was wondering why my old post West Point Bridge Designer 2011 was getting so many hits recently, all from searches.
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